What is a Colocation Data Center?

Colocation is the placement of enterprise-owned compute, storage and networking assets in a third-party leased facility. (Gartner, 2015). Colocation facilities offer scalability, continuity and security for applications, data and systems and often provide access to the most advanced data center technology, while removing the need to build, staff and manage in-house server rooms or data centers, giving clients the ability to focus on their business.

What Are the Services Offered by a Data Center Colocation Facility?

Typically, data center colocation service offers the infrastructure (building), cooling, power, bandwidth, physical security, etc. while the clients provide both storage and servers. Besides this, space at a facility is either leased by the room, cage, rack or cabinet. Many colocation data centers today are expanding their portfolio to extend managed services that back their client’s business initiatives.

Types of Colocation Facilities

A data center colocation facility is generally classified as one of two types: retail or wholesale. A third type has recently become common, hybrid cloud-based colocation facilities.

Retail Colocation

A customer leases space within a data center, usually a rack, space within a rack, or a caged off area.

Wholesale Colocation

A tenant leases a fully built data center space, generally at a cheaper rate than retail vendors, but with lower power and space requirements.

Hybrid Cloud Based Colocation

Hybrid cloud based colocation is a mix of in house and outsourced data center services.

The Uptime Institute has a grading system for operational sustainability to augment tier standards. The tiers focus on the design of the colocation data center facility; the operational sustainability grades target how well the facility is actually run.

Data Center Tiers

Tier 1

A single, non-redundant distribution path serving IT equipment.

Non-redundant capacity components.

Tier 2

All Tier 1 requirements.

Redundant capacity components.

Tier 3

All Tier 1 and 2 requirements.

Multiple independent distribution paths serving IT equipment. Generally, only one distribution path serves equipment at any given time.

All IT equipment is dual-powered and fully compatible within the topology of a site's architecture.

Tier 4

All Tier 1, 2 and 3 requirements.

The facility is fully fault-tolerant, through electrical, storage and distribution networks.

All cooling equipment is independently dual-powered, including HVAC systems.

Top 10 Beneﬁts of Moving your Data Center to a Colocation

The decision may not always be clear when it comes to a build or move choice. Here are some reasons you might want to move to a colocation facility.

A predictable and operational expenditure model.

Flexibility and scalability that allows additional capacity (space, power and bandwidth) to be brought on quickly, cheaply.

Up-to-date facility infrastructure responds to cooling, power and environmental changes.

Secure facility ensures data integrity.

Colocation service level agreements to ensure services are received as negotiated.

Role of DCIM in a Colocation Facility

Data center infrastructure management software is having an impact on colo providers both internally and externally. Internally, providers use it to improve efficiency and resiliency, as well as to make more informed decisions about their infrastructure, forecasts and billing models. Externally, clients of colocation facilities can use DCIM to get insights into uptime, power usage and to make critical decisions as it relates to negotiating contracts for future space. In addition, DCIM helps with remote asset management and capacity planning.

Top Colocation Providers Across the World

Company

Locations

Uptime Institute

Standards / Certifications

SLAs

Security Features

Services

Connectivity and Networking

Energy Efficiency Goals

Americas & Canada

Europe

Asia

Tier III Silver Certification of Operational Sustainability

Tier III Certification of Design Documents

Committed to Uptime Institute M&O Stamp certification for all its data centers by 2016.

100% power uptime Service Level Agreement with temperature and humidity SLAs managed to ASHRAE standard

Multi-level physical and logical security as well as challenge points.

Centralized global security operations center

External and internal video surveillance cameras.

Standard cages and cabinets are outfitted with locking mechanisms.

Ability to add incremental security options such as intra-cage video cameras and card or biometric readers.

City-to-city connections are delivered through high speed wholesale connections either via MPLS or Optical Waves.

Offer a variety of sustainability advantages, including highly efficient cooling systems, power distribution architectures that minimize energy loss while electricity travels from the UPS to IT systems and partnerships with utility providers to make sure vendors are accessing power from the most sustainable sources possible.

A carrier-neutral, network-agnostic data center provider, DFT offers you network connectivity through multiple network carriers, including dark fiber providers and lit carriers. We have relationships with 38 network carriers, two globally leading Internet Exchanges (IXPs) and multiple cloud service providers. If your network carrier of choice is not already onsite, we can invite them to establish their presence in a DFT data center on your behalf.

Numerous green infrastructure investments including evaporative chillers using reclaimed water

PUE has declined by an average of at least 10 percent with each successful data center model adaptation.

Newest facilities feature an industry-leading design Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.15 at full capacity.

All DFT greenfield data centers have earned Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification by the U.S. Green Building Council. Several are LEED Gold certified

Connections to domestic fiber backbones, undersea cables, and to more than 150+ carriers

Connections to an ecosystem of cloud providers and your existing IT through a leading Private IP network; Managed SD WAN services provide access to secure and interconnected hybrid IT ecosystems; and Unified Data Center Interconnect enables connections of cloud workloads to our other IT infrastructure services

Managed Routing Service (MRS) leverages the global network connectivity provided by the world’s largest telecommunications companies located within our carrier-neutral facilities.

Equip data centers with energy-efficient features, including:

UPS designs that use flywheels instead of batteries, reducing the need for cooling.

Our global IPv6-enabled network is monitored 24x7 and we offer proactive security alerts and a DDoS mitigation service, should your IT infrastructure come under attack. Data centers feature fire suppression systems that work in collaboration with heat and smoke detection systems and continuous air sampling.

A Cross Connect Pack will be built between your Colocation space and the MMR terminating to a dedicated patch panel. Within the MMR you will have access to multiple service providers including Cloud Service Providers, ISP’s, Managed Network Service Providers, as well as many of our enterprise clients.

Our team is your team. We live on client success.

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About DCIM and Data Center Infrastructure Management Software

Today's data centers have increased in size, density and complexity. Managers need an easy to use Data Center Management System to improve efficiency through data center optimization, extending the useful life of their existing physical infrastructure, while ensuring uptime. A new category of tools with integrated processes, DCIM Software, combines the capability of tracking assets with the coordination and validation of managing space, power, data center cable management and cooling.